Useless people, concealed crime: Sources and research on the mass killings of patients in psychiatric hospitals and homes for sick children and for the disabled in Nazi-occupied Ukraine (original) (raw)

2020, «Непотрібні люди»: злочин, суд, (не)пам’ять (Нацистське насильство щодо пацієнтів психіятричних лікарень, інтернатів для хворих дітей та будинків інвалідів у контексті повоєнних судів та меморіяльних практик). Тематичний випуск, Україна Модерна 28

https://doi.org/10.30970/uam.2020.28.1153

Commenced in Nazi-ruled Germany during the 1930s, mass killings of patients in psychiatric facilities and homes for the disabled (including children)—who were considered “useless to society,” “superfluous eaters,” or a “threat to racial purity”— continued also in German-occupied Soviet territories during the Second World War. The “Aktion T4” involuntary euthanasia program, under whose parameters these killings had been initiated and carried out in Germany itself, officially ended in the summer of 1941; meanwhile, mass killings of civilians registered as patients commenced in Soviet Ukrainian psychiatric medical institutions, homes for the disabled, occupational therapy facilities (“labour colonies”), and other similar places. According to the data that are currently available, almost all researchers agree that nearly twenty thousand people were killed at Soviet psychiatric facilities. In Nazi-occupied Ukraine, mass killings were carried out at psychiatric hospitals and occupational therapy facilities in Vinnytsia, Ihren, Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and a number of other places. The Nazi crime of involuntary euthanasia of psychiatric patients in Soviet clinics was different from that committed on German territory. The research and motivations surrounding the specific differences are the subject of this special issue of Ukraina Moderna.